Putting OpenAI o1 to the test

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Welcome back, Superhuman

Yesterday, we brought you news that OpenAI has finally unveiled its long-awaited Strawberry model. Today, we’ll dig into the specifics and explore whether the hype was really worth it.

Today’s Insights

• The AI world reacts to OpenAI o1

• Frontier: AI’s energy crisis

• Tutorial: How to use Claude’s “explain” feature

• Everything else you should know today

• 5 new AI tools to boost your productivity

• AI-Generated Images: Wyoming Weekend

NEXT IN AI

The industry reacts to OpenAI’s groundbreaking new model

OpenAI’s “Strawberry” is finally here, and it’s sparking reactions across the AI industry. Here’s everything you need to know about the new OpenAI o1, which is expected to help the startup soar to a $150B valuation.

What makes it unique? Most LLMs hoover up as much information as possible and generate new material by riffing on what they’ve already consumed. o1, on the other hand, can figure out how different concepts and principles actually work by breaking them down step-by-step. 

How exactly? If you present it with a math problem, it’ll try out a bunch of different scenarios. When it finally lands on the right answer, it gets a pat on the back, incentivizing it to do better the next time around. In this way, it starts to “understand” why it’s making each decision — and can catch itself each time it makes a mistake.

What can it do? It’s good at solving problems it’s never seen before. That includes coding simple video games from text prompts, solving Olympiad-level math problems, and mapping out relationships between little-known enzymes. And, yes, it can even tell you how many “r”s are in the word “strawberry” — something that most models struggle with.

So, is it AGI? Not quite. OpenAI engineers say there’s still a long way to go before we reach truly human-level intelligence — and Sam Altman admitted the model “seems more impressive on first use than it does after you spend more time with it.” But at a time when some experts thought AI progress was leveling off, o1 has opened up a brand-new avenue for innovation.

When can I use it? OpenAI’s keeping the most powerful version close to its chest. But ChatGPT Plus users can immediately use o1-preview and its smaller sibling o1-mini by selecting them in their dropdown menus. Non-subscribers will get access at some point too, although OpenAI hasn’t given a date just yet.

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FROM THE FRONTIER

Sam Altman talks AI energy at the White House

AI energy consumption is expected to surge tenfold between 2023 to 2026, according to the International Energy Agency — and some experts fear our infrastructure won’t be able to keep up. For the first time, a who’s who of AI industry leaders — including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei — just stopped by the White House to show why that predicament should be a top priority for the US government. 

What did they propose? Representatives from Microsoft, Alphabet, and other major tech companies want the US government to prepare for the energy strain by building more data centers, semiconductor plants, and power generation facilities, CNN reported. Other initiatives include finding sustainable alternatives like solar power that would help reduce AI’s environmental impact.

THE AI ACADEMY

How to use Claude’s new EXPLAIN feature

• Go to Claude’s website and log in with your account.

• Now make sure you select Claude 3.5 Sonnet as your model.

• Prompt to start a conversation that generates a code artifact.

• Once you get the output, go to the code tab and select any part of the code then click ‘Explain’ to get a detailed explanation.

• You can also improve the code by clicking on the Improve button.

Pro Tip: Highlight the most difficult parts of the code to get a better understanding.

PROMPT OF THE DAY

Friday Funday - Let’s try out o1-preview

Prompt: There are five people (A,B,C,D and E) in a room. A is watching TV with B. E is playing table tennis. D is sleeping. Suddenly, a call came on the telephone and B went out of the room to pick up the call. What is C doing?

_{Source: Taelin (@VictorTaelin) on X}

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AI & TECH NEWS

Everything else you need to know today

• Sounds Scholarly: Alphabet’s study platform NotebookLM has a new “audio overview” tool that lets you transform your research and citations into a podcast featuring a pair of AI voices.

• Llama Farm: Meta is reportedly building a cluster of 100,000 Nvidia chips, which it will use to train the next iteration of its open-source Llama model.

• AI Matchmaker: A startup called OffDeal raised $4.7M to help small businesses find larger companies to sell to using AI agents.

• Faster Fabs: Germany’s Infineon Technologies developed a new method of AI chip manufacturing that it says will speed up production by more than a factor of two.

✍️ Digital Signature: A tech reporter named Benj Edwards recently put the new image generator Flux to the test by giving it an unusual challenge. He fed it notebooks filled with his dad’s handwriting, then asked it to write new messages in the same style. Edwards said it ended up being a surprisingly poignant moment: It was the first time he’d seen his father’s handwriting since he passed away in 2013.

🧠 Brain Food: The Center for AI Safety has unveiled a new “automated forecasting” platform that it says performs better than individual human forecasters — and about the same as groups of human forecasters. Powered by GPT-4o, it can give the probability of different open-ended scenarios, like “Will we get superintelligence by 2030?”

PRODUCTIVITY

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AI-GENERATED IMAGES

Weekend Plans in Wyoming

Midjourney Prompt: luxury Wyoming ranch on a lake with views of the mountains
--ar 9:16 --v 6.1

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Until next time!

Zain & the Superhuman AI team